The Iraqi Shiites

Shiites in Iraq were radicalized and brutalized by two major events: the Baath crackdown on Shiite political activity in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the crushing of the 1991 uprising and subsequent persecution of and even genocide against Shiites in the South. As a result of the cruel 1990s, Khomeinist ideas gained far more purchase with the poverty-stricken and desperate younger generation than a secular middle-class expatriate like Chalabi could have dreamed. Indeed, Chalabi left Iraq in 1958 and the beginnings of organized Shiite politics coincide more or less exactly with the time of his departure.

Shiite religious politics in Iraq largely date from the founding of the al-Da`wa Party in 1957. Al-Da`wa sought to establish an Islamic state in Iraq. Among its major theorists was Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a prominent cleric and intellectual who dedicated himself to developing a modernist Shiite ideology that could compete with Marxism.

Although Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini developed his theory of clerical rule (vilayat-i faqih) while in exile in Najaf (1964–1978), it did not become immediately popular among most clerics there. Najaf had long been a center of seminary education and clerical jurisprudence, and lay Shiites generally followed its leading scholar, called an Object of Emulation, in matters of religious law. Shiites of this branch believed that the Prophet Muhammad's successors or vicars were his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and the eleven lineal descendants of Ali and the Prophet's daughter, Fatima. The twelfth of these vicars or "Imams" was held to have disappeared into a supernatural realm, from which he would one day return. In the absence of the hidden Twelfth Imam, the mainstream of the Shiite tradition gradually turned to trained clergymen as their leaders. Although scholastic Twelver Shiism (the branch practiced in Iran and Iraq) had as its ideal that the laity would follow the rulings of the single most learned and upright Object of Emulation, in fact there were always several contenders for the position. Religious authority was thus multiple. There was no Shiite pope, even if the theorists of clerical authority sometimes seemed to wish for one. Moreover, the Shiite tradition of thinking about political power did not envisage that clerics would exercise direct political power. In the medieval and early modern periods most clerics heaped fulsome praise on Shiite monarchs who defended the faith. Khomeini's thought was revolutionary. He maintained that monarchy is incompatible with Islam, and he insisted that in the absence of the Hidden Twelfth Imam, the clergy should rule. Khomeini taught the "guardianship of the jurisprudent." At the top of the Islamic government, as head of state, should stand a clerical jurisprudent who would safeguard the interests of Shiite Islam. Laypersons could serve in parliament and even as president, but supreme power would be in clerical hands. This vision differed deeply from the lay versions of Muslim fundamentalism, which wanted a medieval interpretation of Islamic law to become the law of the land but did not give any special place in the governmental system to Muslim clergymen.

While many clerics in the Najaf tradition wanted a state governed by Islamic principles, they rejected Khomeini's idea that clerics themselves should rule. Moreover, Iraq's own theorist of Islamic government, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, envisaged an elected assembly that need not be made up of clerics. Thus, the initial Iraqi Shiite idea of an Islamic state was at odds with the Khomeinist theory that came to dominate Iran in 1979.

In response to the large Shiite demonstrations of 1977 and the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, the Baath repressed Shiite religious parties and leaders relentlessly. They hanged al-Sadr in 1980 and made membership in the al-Da`wa Party a capital crime. Many al-Da`wa members were arrested and the party went deep underground, expanding its cell organization even as it dispersed geographically.

In the 1980s and 1990s al-Da`wa had several bases. One group of members and leaders took refuge in Iran. Another was based in London. Inside Iraq, the organization remained strong in the Middle Euphrates region (in southern Iraq), especially around Nasiriya. The Basra branch, called Tanzim al-Da`wa, rejected Khomeinism. These branches were not in good contact with one another and developed quite differently with regard to ideology and organization.

The pro-Khomeini "Islamic Jihad" group, linked to al-Da`wa and based in Lebanon and Iran, blew up the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in late 1983 and hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner a year later. (In this period of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States and Kuwait were backing Saddam Hussein). Islamic Jihad may have been a splinter group or it may have been a covert paramilitary operation of the Tehran-based al-Da`wa Party. But to the extent that al-Da`wa itself engaged in violence and took credit for it, the target was the Baath in Iraq.

As many as 200,000 Iraqi Shiites ended up in political exile in Iran over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these exiles joined the Iran-based al-Da`wa, which tended to accept Khomeini's idea of clerical rule. But the organization was riven by internal fighting over the party's relationship to the Supreme Jurisprudent. Clerical leaders of the al-Da`wa seemed especially attracted by Khomeinism, while the lay leaders insisted on maintaining the party's autonomy from the Supreme Jurisprudent. The question had implications for al-Da`wa's future. Was it to become a mere appendage of Tehran or remain an Iraqi party with a distinctive ideology? Some clerical members of the party's central committee, such as Muhammad Mahdi Asefi and Sayyid Kazim al-Haeri, wanted the party to put itself under the direct authority of Khomeini and then his successor, Ali Khamenei. This step would have entailed dissolving the party into the Iranian Hezbollah. Khomeini himself reportedly showed no enthusiasm for this step, and the lay members of the executive committee were also unwilling to subordinate themselves to the religious institution. The issue festered inside the party throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s in Iran. In 2000 Asefi was forced to resign as party leader over his continued attempts to put it under the authority of Iranian Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei.

The al-Da`wa branch in London (led by Abo Ali and Ibrahim Jaafari) had a more lay cast. It also had the greatest freedom of movement, and so the center of gravity of the party moved away from Iran.

The circumstances for al-Da`wa were worst within Iraq. During and after the post–Gulf War uprising of 1991, thousands of al-Da`wa members or alleged members were arrested, executed, and buried in mass graves.

Of course, al-Da`wa was not the only Iraqi Shiite group, and in 1982 Shiite activists in Iran, attempting to create an umbrella movement for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, founded the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), with al-Da`wa as one of the constituent organizations. In 1984 Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, member of a leading Iraqi Shiite family and an associate of al-Sadr, became the head of SCIRI (also called SAIRI). The same year, al-Da`wa broke with SCIRI in order to maintain its independence. Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim accepted Khomeini's theory of clerical rule. SCIRI took credit for bombings and assassination plots against the Baath in Baghdad. It organized a militia, the Badr Brigade, which carried out attacks across the Iranian border into Iraq. This paramilitary, trained and armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, over time grew to become the Badr Corps, consisting of 10,000 fighters by the late 1990s. In the 1990s, SCIRI and the Iranian al-Da`wa developed a deadly rivalry, to the point that (according to rumors) al-Da`wa members targeted Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim himself.

The London-based branch of al-Da`wa was drawn into the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in 1992–1995. Iraqi financier Ahmad Chalabi had founded the INC as an umbrella group after the Gulf War, with CIA help and funds (via the Rendon Group). Chalabi had had to flee Jordan for London in the late 1980s under suspicion of massive embezzlement from the bank he headed there. A secular Shiite, he worked in London in the 1990s to unite 19 organizations grouping religious Shiites, their secular coreligionists, Sunni Arabs (including ex-Baathists), and Kurds. The INC managed to include both al-Da`wa and al-Hakim's SCIRI for a while.